Archives for January 2012

Nash’s Prepared Mustard was sold in a number of different figural glass jars —(that could often be reused as children’s coin banks)— and in the late 1940s or early 1950s one of these jars was “Liberty Bell” shaped. (Jar on left from eBay $39.99; jar on right from eBid $19.99)

It’s customary for sellers of antique glassware to stipulate to any chips or cracks, but, with Liberty Bell jars, it’s interesting to see whether the seller will notice the paradox of a glass reproduction of the famously cracked Liberty Bell. Some don’t seem to notice it:

“Shape of liberty bell jar is in very good condition. No chips, no cracks.”

Others do:

“imitation” crack that you would find on the real Liberty Bell

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“The jar has no chips or cracks except the crack that is suppose to be on the liberty bell.”

Kraft also came out with a mustard in this type of jar and later, in 1976, Liberty Bell jars enjoyed a brief Bicentennial renaissance as containers for maraschino cherries, Spanish olives and probably other patriotic foods, as well.

If you read this blog by way of email subscription or RSS feed, you may have wondered why box vox suddenly stopped posting this past week. The fact is, I’ve had my hands full trying to migrate this blog from TypePad to a WordPress site hosted on our own BeachPackagingDesign site. There were actually three posts made since the switch, but it only dawned on me yesterday that feed subscribers were being orphaned by the move. Now that I’ve updated the RSS feed, I’m hoping everyone who opted in will continue receiving our ultra-significant package design missives.

Originally, toys like the pink refrigerator on the right (with “a full larder reproduced on door insides”) retailed for only $2.98, but as a collectible the price is now higher. (Wolverine advertising photo via: The People History)

The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture “This is a pipe,” I’d have been lying!

In Pedersen’s painting, Magritte’s paradox is given an additional twist, since the product portrayed is, itself, a faux pipe. [Full disclosure: when I was in art school, I combined a 6 inch lenngth of galvanized heating pipe with an elbow joint (forming a pipe-like shape) and gave it the old “Ceci n’est pas une pipe inscription.]

Originally trademarked in 1966 by Chicago based Leaf Brands, Inc., the product has recently come under fire as a simulated tobacco candy product.(like candy cigarettes) and appears to be somewhat discontinued. That is to say, I can find no mention of it on Leaf’s web site.

Back in 2009, I wrote a post about Canada Dry’s mysterious Astronaut Water that, in the 1960s, came in a space capsule shaped plastic bottle. Clearly, the product was connected to the Gemini space program, but I couldn’t understand how plain, bottled water could have been promoted in those days as a kids’ beverage—even if it was the same stuff the astronauts drank in outer space.

Recently I was contacted by John MacLean, now head of Target Flavors, who, in the 1960s had worked at Canada Dry Laboratories and was uniquely qualified to clear things up for me.

Maclean, shown in a 1965 press clipping above (holding, what I believe is, a Gemini “8” Astronaut Water bottle like the one on the left) explained to me that, despite its commerical packaging, Astronaut Water was never meant to be retail product. A small number of these bottles were distributed to the press as part of a promotional campaign to publicize Canada Dry’s important contribution to the space program.

John S. MacLean of Danbury, Conn., analytical chemist who drew up specifications for the water, holds a sample bottle of the triple distilled liquid. Not for sale to the public, Astronaut Water undergoes a thorough inspection at Greenwich Canada Dry Laboratories before it is used in space flights for drinking, reconstituting dehydrated foods and purging space capsule systems.

An unidentified Connecticut Newspaper, 1965

In contrast to today’s packaged water, which is generally promoted for its natural purity, Astronaut Water was publicized as a space-age engineering feat. Triple distilled in a platinum block… So pure that it doesn’t conduct electricity… (More of the water’s technical specs appeared in the 1966 “Press Reference Book” for Gemini Spacecraft Number Eleven, prepared by the External Relations Division, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, on right)

The Gemini “8” bottle was an ordinary glass beverage-bottle, but for the Gemini “9” version, they really pulled out the stops, opting for the plastic, space capsule shaped bottle. Although MacLean could not confirm this, it seems likely that the matching space-capsule-shaped-bottle-shaped savings bank (below) was part of the same publicity campaign.

Once it had been made clear to me that it was journalists (and not children) who were the intended demographic for bottled Astronaut Water, I wondered if there were any articles to be found online about it…